The Abortive Debate

Donald Trump, throughout his very public career, has displayed a penchant for taking live wires, stripping back the insulation, and sinking his gleaming pearlies in with unhindered glee.  The most recent example has been his juggling of the abortion issue under fire from Chris Matthews.

Among my many criticisms of Trump is that he is not a very bright or thoughtful man.  You may argue that his vast wealth is proof of his intelligence, but as Bernstein so aptly put it in Citizen Kane, "Well, it's no trick to making a lot of money, if all you want is to make a lot of money."  A survey of the British royals will quickly disavow one of the connection between wealth and intelligence.

In any case, prying the lid off the abortion debate as Trump has done is a fine opportunity to weigh in with our Far Side take on the issue, and as usual, we don't expect that a lot of folks will be happy with it.  I'm sure that if Trump were even slightly more intellectual and educated, he might have put forth the following argument against abortion.

It all begins with the Enlightenment, that quiet little period from the late 1600s to the early 1800s, when Western philosophy caught fire and took a decidedly Libertarian course.  This period, punctuated by intellects like Voltaire, Descartes, Locke, Franklin, and Jefferson, single-handedly brought down the monarchies of Europe and endowed humanity with individual sovereignty and rights.

Before we go any further, it is important to dissect the word "unalienable."  To most folks, the root of this rather important word is "alien," meaning foreign.  That is a mistaken impression.  The root is "lien," meaning to lay claim to or place a debt on some property other than your own.  The prefix "un-" means "reverse" or "not."  The prefix "a-" means "to" or "upon."  The suffix "-able" means "capable of."  Thus, "unaLIENable" means "not able to place a claim or debt on."  It does not mean "not able to be foreign on."  Just wanted to make that clear.

So when we read the immortal words of the US Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," we see that the positive claim here is that Rights are innate property of the individual and may not have claims or debts placed upon them.

This was then, and for the most part still is, a wildly radical claim.  We are born with property that may not be taken away or claimed by anyone else - at least morally and ethically.  In practice, this often fails to hold true without the owner forcefully protecting that property.  Thus the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, but that's an argument for another time.

And so, at long last, we come to the core issue of this rant: abortion.  A great many people say that abortion is included in a woman's right to choose.  I disagree.  There are three individuals involved in the choice: the man, the woman and the child.

Obviously, the child is incapable at this point to verbalize its choice, so under any moral or ethical standard, its guardians must speak for it.  Since all life has an inborn desire to continue, we must default to the child's choice being for Life, and we must protect that implied choice until the child reaches the age of wisdom.

Some people will take issue with calling a fetus a child.  The fetus represents one developmental stage in the mental, biological and/or spiritual growth of a human being.  It is a product of, and carries copious amounts of DNA that can only create a human being.  There is no chance that the fetus might end up a chicken or an elephant.  The DNA also ensures that the fetus is in every way an individual, since its genetics distinguish it from all others.

Thus, from the moment of conception, the zygote (later fetus) has a complete set of human DNA, and is therefore human and entitled to all the rights every other human claims.  It is disingenuous to say that a fetus has no rights because it is not fully independent of its host.  The same argument can be made to randomly kill prisoners because  they are not free and the guards must make choices for them.

When one "chooses" to have an abortion, one is most certainly killing an individual human being that our culture, over many long and painful centuries, has endowed with certain unalienable rights, chief among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  By destroying the fetus, one lays claim to these three key Rights and deprives the fetus of innate property in a way that would be completely unacceptable and a capital offense at nearly every other stage of human development.

To argue that abortion is a right is to say that any individual may deprive any other individual of their basic human Rights, without recourse or due process.  All other considerations aside, this is the core of the matter.  The only way to refute this claim is to deny and unwind centuries of legal and philosophical debate and development.  The conclusion is self-evident, as Thomas Jefferson points out..

The "choice" in this situation is whether or not to have sex where procreation is possible, and to choose methods of birth control, should one so desire.  Once the parents' matched sets of 23 chromosomes combine to make the full compliment of an individual human being, there can no longer be a choice to place a lien on that individual's Rights.  Quod erat demonstrandum.

Except that no one is sufficiently educated in history and philosophy any more, I cannot understand why people, 1) cannot articulate this argument, and 2) cannot see the rationality of it.  If we callously strip any class of human beings of their innate and unaLIENable Rights, then it becomes increasingly easy to justify each successive deprivation.

In fact, it may be argued - though not here now - that legalizing abortion has led to rapid degradation of rights in the countries where it has been done.  Mass surveillance, arbitrary police powers, official corruption, and erosion of public discourse seems to follow from the choice to deprive society's most defenseless members of their unaLIENable rights.

In an age when so many options are available to prevent unwanted pregnancies, it seems high time to revisit this most divisive issue, but in a calm and rational manner.  As I have shown here, it is possible to make a clear argument without destructive emotions interfering.  There is no rational justification for placing liens on that which is unalienable, and if we try, we only succeed in eroding our own precious freedom and destroying centuries of human social thought and development.

A Shark By Any Other Name

Cade:
I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat
and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,
that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

Dick:
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Cade:
Nay, that I mean to do.

--Shakespeare, Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78

From the moment Man created Law, he created his own worst enemy, the lawyer.

There has always been a class of people who have insinuated themselves into the middleman position between us and Justice. In the Bible, God reached down and etched The Law on some stone tablets (which if you've read Joseph Farrell's The Cosmic War, then you know what those are). Almost immediately, there arose a class of folks who began interpreting what exactly God meant by 'false gods' and 'keeping holy the Sabbath.' Biblical readers will know these folks as Pharisees.

The Pharisees' job was to take fairly clear, simple language and obfuscate the hell out it. Keeping holy the Sabbath meant that you couldn't walk more than so far from your door, and you had to follow a certain script when praying, and you had to wear certain clothes, and if you were a woman, well forget you. You don't get no preachifying.

The Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Greeks, and most importanly (to us), the Romans, all had this class of 'know-betters' who told us they were necessary to interpret Law, as well as speak for us ignorant rabble in the Holy Courts of the Land.

Certainly, Babylonian law, at least in terms of form and function, are still deeply rooted in Western culture to this time. However, the most influencial law today is Roman administrative law, which informs everything from traffic court to civil tort in our modern system.

The law is basically divided into two primary classes: The Organic or Natural Law, and the Administrative Law. The Natural Law makes complete sense, of course. It deals with big concepts of fairness and justice. The civil administrative code are all the stupid little infractions that serve as revenue generators in modern society. Even the use of the word 'code' is a clue as to what is going on.

The Natural Law, as has been eloquently expounded on by far greater minds than mind, is summed up in a few basic concepts: don't murder, don't steal and leave your neighbor's stuff alone. These are things that are pretty much hard-wired into humans. We have a natural abhorrance to things like murder and theft. It violates out sense of fair play and equality. It applies in the jungles of Borneo, as well as the jungles of Manhattan. It is universally enshined in every legal system everywhere throughout all history.

Civil or Administrative Code, on the other hand, is a creature of society. It springs from the concept of 'contract.' In Texas, we say a man's word is his bond, but in actual practice, a lot of people welsh on agreements. Thus, the contract was born. This is a document which spells out the precise terms and performance of an agreement, no matter what the subject. There is a proscribled form in most legal systems.

Herein lies the problem. Once you introduce the concept of contract, then you must build up an infrastructure to enforce it, which in turn introduces a sub-class of human whose job it is to parse and interpret every little nuance of the contract to find loopholes and force performance.

Contract further opens the door to a thing called 'citizenship.' This is often referred to as the 'social contract.' I call myself a citizen and pay taxes, and in return, the 'system' provides me certain services, such as enforcement of contracts. The 'social contract' leads to 'citizenship,' which leads to 'obligation,' which leads to 'conspription.' Conscription can take many forms.

Once you are a citizen of some abstraction called a 'nation,' then you can be compelled, through contract, to perform certain duties. These duties many involve taxes, armed forces service, compulsory education, and obeying speed limits. Whatever whims strike the 'government,' as dreamed up by 'lawyers,' can be enforced on the 'citizenry' because of 'social contract.' Key words include that little gem, 'enforced,' as in at the point of a gun.

Once we've established this thing called a 'citizen,' which in fact in NOT a human being, but a construct of administrative code, then the next step is to create 'artificial' persons called 'corporations,' from the Latin corpus, meaning 'body.' Corporations are, in the eyes of the administrative code, the same as a 'citizen.' They have rights and obligations to the state, just like 'citizens.'

This is why concepts, such as 'civil rights,' are so dangerous. It implies that the civil authority confers such rights and that it can give them to any entity it wants, or conversely, take them away. Civil rights are NOT Natural Rights. They are granted by a civil authority, and can be taken back at the whim of civil authority. This is why Thomas Jefferson made the statement:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Often mispronounced, the word "unalienable" is not 'un-ALIEN-able,' but 'un-a-LIEN-able,' as in a lien on your car or house. In other words, the rights are part of being human and can not be given away or taken away. Natural human beings have 'unalienable' rights, 'citizens' have civil rights as part of their contract with 'authority.' If you violate the 'civil contract,' your right to 'liberty' is taken away and you are promptly thrown in jail. Obviously, civil authority thinks it is higher than the Creator/Universe/God.

To continue building on our theme, the British developed the Law of the Seas, which was founded on centuries of thought and practice. The Law of the Seas eventually became the Law of Admiralty, making the Admiral of a fleet the ultimately authority under the Crown when on the 'high seas.' The Law of Admiralty evolved into the Law of Nations, which is the foundation of the UN's supposed authority.

Under the Law of Nations, there is a thing called the Law of Flags, which is this annoying habit of Europeans to run around the world sticking their flags in everything and calling it 'theirs.' The first thing Apollo astronauts did on the Moon, after setting up cameras to record the events, was stick a flag in the Moon to clain it for the USofA. Anyway, under the Law of Flags, any Court of Admiralty must disply the flag of the host nation with a gold fringe, or Admiral's Flag. Thus, when you walk into any courtroom, classroom or Kiwanis hall, there's always a gold-fringed flag. You are no longer under the 'organic' law of your native land, you are now under the Law of Nations, or Admiralty.

Out of this was born the Universal Code of Commerce, or UCC. The UCC is a far-reaching set of administrative laws that govern just about everything done in commerce, which lawyers will tell you is anyting you do in public. Driving to work, shopping for food, going to the doctor are all governed by the UCC, which is why it all requires 'licenses.' A license, as defined by code, is permission to do something which is otherwise illegal. So, your health, your mobility and your food are all illegal and must have the permission of the 'Crown' in order to perform these actions.

As a 'citizen,' you are given a 'birth certificate.' Without it, you don't 'exist.' You are a natural human being on the land and are not part of the civil contract. However, if you have one, then you are bound from birth to the civil contract and must perform certain actions under that contract, or lose your civil rights. This 'citizen' concept is often referred to as the 'straw man.' Corporate charters are 'birth certificates,' and the 'by-laws' function as the conscience of these artificial 'persons.'

This all leads to the final point. Under the law, there are 'words' and there are 'terms.' Words are understood to have the 'common' or dictionary meaning, while terms have special definitions under the law. If you read laws, you will usually see at the beginning something like, "For the purposes of this section, the term 'vehicle' shall mean..."

The concept of Natural Rights can be summed up as, I am free to do whatever I want as long as it doesn't iminge on your right to do the same. So if I want to shoot up heroine, smoke opium and sit in the corner of my room drooling and masturbating, that is my right, as long as I don't interfere with your right not to do those things and you don't interfere with my right to continue.

There are so many concepts to cover within this topic, things such as: Freedom of Expression in NOT Freedom of Speech; The Right to Travel cannot be licensed or regulated, even on public roadways; Taxes are NOT an inevitable part of life. It's all very complex, thanks in whole to those creatures called 'lawyers.'

It all boils down to exactitude of language being purity of thought. If you are aware of how you are manipulated through the use of words and terms, then you are 90% of the way home. The rest is acting on that knowledge. Therein lies the rub.

Most of us would rather sit around watching 'American Idol' than reading the law and studying the development of our current enslavement. It's hard to complain about imprisonment when you can endlessly entertain yourself with knick-knacks and geegaws. But, distraction is not solution, and as long as we think that we are free inside of our prison, we will watch our natural rights and our true wealth leech away until one day (sooner than later, I think) we will have nothing. Except, maybe, a gaggle of lawyers.

Are all lawyers bad? In intent, no. In practice, yes. Every lawyer, no matter how well-intentioned and high-minded he is, is part of the problem and can never be part of the solution. Every legal solution adds yet another layer to the onion of our captivity. There is only one way out.

As the old, tired saying goes, “Ignorance of the law in no defense.” Therefore, it stands to reason that knowldge of the law is the perfect defense. For the most part, we are profoundly ignorant of something that affects every single aspect of our lives. It behooves us to take some part of our lives to learn about and act upon something that is that far rooted. Certainly, if you have the time to worry about the life and times of your favorite pop star or the vaguest stats of your favorite sport hero, then you have time to learn about the invisible net that has entrapped and enslaved you.

Remember the next time you go to court, and you hire a lawyer, what you have done is declared yourself 'incompetent' in the eyes of the law. You have rendered yourself 'mute before the bench' and basically told the court that you are mentally incompetent to stand up for yourself. In other words, hiring a lawyer is, IN FACT, a plea of insanity.

Don't believe me? Look it up.

Latest developments on the 'Strawman Argument.'